My friends and I have recently decided to try and play Dungeons and Dragons. I am going to be the Dungeon Master. As such my creativity in terms of the world has really blossomed. I have a general sketch of what I want the world to look like on some engineering paper. I have since discovered this site and, more importantly, Ascensions tutorial (http://www.cartographersguild.com/content/116-ascensions-atlas-style-photoshop.html). When I saw his tutorial I instantly wanted to try and create this map myself. I have downloaded a trial version of adobe photoshop to follow along with the tutorial (I have 30 days to learn everything! haha). So, as it turns out, I clearly do not have the background in order to clearly understand all of the steps to know why things are done to gain the desired effect so I am at a loss as what I do is not what is done in the tutorial.

My basic problems seem to be:
1: the land effect is too mountainous
2: because of [Problem 1] my mountains aren't very noticable.
3: Everything is fairly dark (I sometimes seem to be able to remedy this, tho I don't really know what I change)
4: Photoshop is completely different than any program I've every used (Well, I use autocad, so I get layers) so... that doesn't help my situation...

The tutorial, to me, is very basic and straight forward. Seems perfect for someone with no experience with the software. As such I feel like I get fairly close to the desired final product, but fall just short somewhere.

My hope is, someone to follow my steps and tell me where I slip up so I can create a great looking map. I have provided screen shots along each step to (hopefully) compare.

thanks everyone! I'm very excited I found this site and discovered the fun (and sometimes frustrating) of map making!

This is where it is clear that something went very wrong. I'm sorry for how general everything is :/ I'll continue to work with photoshop and hopefully figure it out myself. I just thought I'd get input from the collective.